Читать книгу Hillwalking in Wales - Vol 2 онлайн

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The usual lines of ascent follow the N and S ridges. There is no better scramble than the N ridge, a long succession of rocky steps, shelves and giant boulders where the use of hands is obligatory. The S ridge is shorter and easier but no less rewarding. The W face is unfashionable, but if you can survive the early grind there is again an excellent scrambling finale. Curiously, for such a bastion of power, it is the E face that offers one of the easiest approaches – along a shelf known as the Heather Terrace that slants diagonally across it and is easily distinguishable from the road.

Of the three tops the one in the middle is the main top, the highest; a boulder-strewn platform where two famous monoliths called Adam and Eve (often mistaken for climbers by viewers in the valley below) stand in for the customary cairn. The spikier N top, 5min away across the scree gully that rends the W face, is the smallest and most rugged of the three tops. Airy and free of crowds, it is the most ‘Tryfan-like’ in character. The S top is flat and slabby beneath a tiny wall that can cause a minor problem for ordinary pedestrians. Finally, nearly 300ft below across a much-trodden col, is the far S top, a rocky eminence with a tiny tarn that from some viewpoints looks like a Tryfan in embryo.